


let's not give the game away

by smithens



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: 1910s, Facial Shaving, Kinktober 2020, M/M, Young Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:40:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26758147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smithens/pseuds/smithens
Summary: Thomas struggles with a finer detail of valeting.
Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Duke of Crowborough
Comments: 9
Kudos: 50





	let's not give the game away

**Author's Note:**

> i was going to post these [kinktober prompt fills] anonymously but literally who would i be kidding. it would just be like "if you know who i am no you don't <3" 
> 
> i don't even have half the month completed so i have no idea what my fill rate will be but some of them will not be explicit (comme ça) so if you hate porn and like my fanfic i'm not leaving you out!
>
>> Summer comes and winter fades  
> Here we are just the same  
> Don't need pressure, don't need change  
> Let's not give the game away
>> 
>> There used to be an empty space  
> A photograph without a face  
> But with your presence and your grace  
> Everything falls into place
> 
> — Gabrielle Aplin, "Please Don't Say You Love Me" 

"I'm afraid I can't return the favour in kind," Philip says, "though it looks as if you'll need it."

Philip reaches out to stroke his jaw (his jaw that has gone a full day without a shave and shows it) with his thumb; Thomas stills. Suddenly very nervous, he pulls the razor away from Philip's face—there's not much left, just a bit at the corner of his jaw, he could do it himself if he liked, really, but— 

But now that he's touched him Thomas has too many butterflies in his stomach to finish the job properly. 

He's done this enough times before. He's had practice.

Just he's never done it on somebody he _likes,_ and that makes the stakes seem much higher. It's all well and good shaving Lord Somebody staying over at Downton Abbey (or Grantham House, as the case may be…) for two days and knowing you wouldn't mind cutting him if there wouldn't be any consequences for it, but shaving a _lover…_ well, that's different, isn't it? That matters.

Before this summer he'd never even _had_ a lover. Now he does it's taking up every part of his brain.

"You have the colouring of Snow White."

Never heard that one before.

His cheeks get warm. He's too bloody romantic for his own good.

Funny to think he likes fairy tales.

 _If it were anybody else…_ but men like them don't like things in the same way that other people do. They understand them different, know them better. 

He'll stand by his opinion that some people like things for the wrong reasons, and by his opinion that he doesn't tend to.

"Usually people think I'm older than I am," Thomas mumbles, though he doesn't know why—why he says it nor why he says it like a bumbling idiot. "'Cause of it."

"Really?" says Philip. He leans back on his hands—not nearly confident enough to continue with the razor in this position, Thomas sits back, himself, straightening his spine, setting his shoulders. He sets it down. "How old are you?"

He could lie. He _should_ lie, probably. He's been given enough shit about his age from other people of his lot already, since starting in service, because somehow they all figure it out, even though blokes his _own_ age always see him differently… which is lucky, really. He hasn't met a competent footman from some place else yet, and the incompetent ones wouldn't listen to him if they knew how young he was. Even though this is his second London season.

"Twenty," he says, oh so easily, but then Philip tilts his head at him as though disbelieving, and he adds, hasty, "er, in November." God, he can't stick to _anything_ with him _…_ the truth just comes out, no matter how much he doesn't want it to. With everything, not just this. "I'll be twenty in November." 

Philip smiles. "Like the lovely Lady Mary, isn't it?"

"No, I'm older." 

He snaps, almost. Not as much as he's capable of but too much for a man who's wearing somebody else's dressing gown with his clothes hidden God-knows-where in the London home of a fucking Duke. If he gets thrown out of here like this—because men've certainly done _that_ before—he won't have a very nice time of it. 

"I'd never have guessed," says Philip airily. He really has the sweetest smile, the kindest eyes...

"Yeah," he says, his nerves back to him. Funny that a _Duke_ is the only person who can make him feel at ease. Make him feel like they're the only two people in the whole world, and everything and everybody else is just – just noise, just characters, stuff in the background. As significant as something you pass on the street once in your life and never see again, never have to remember. "Like I said, people don't."

Everything and everybody but them.

"It can be our secret."

"We've got a lot of those by now," says Thomas, coy.

He picks the razor back up.

He sits straight again.

"We do, don't we?"

Before he can do anything more, Philip kisses him.

**Author's Note:**

> i was mixed on whether or not to use the lyric title but i am a silly person and couldn't resist the "your grace" aspect
> 
> [my tumblr is @combeferre](https://combeferre.tumblr.com)


End file.
